After what feels like an eternity, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is finally getting its new mail trucks. While they’re certainly not going to be the prettiest vehicles on the road, they’ll prevent offices from having to source whatever vehicles they can get their hands on while surviving examples of the Grumman Long Life Vehicle (LLV) continue to serve well beyond the point everyone assumed it would have to.
Based on a report from the Associated Press, new mail trucks have started to arrive and are apparently garnering positive reviews from postal workers.
From AP:
Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens, Georgia, are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.
Within a few years, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.
Once fully deployed, they’ll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes.
The current postal vehicles — the Grumman Long Life Vehicle, dating to 1987 — have made good on their name, outlasting their projected 25-year lifespan. But they’re well overdue for replacement.
While the Grumman’s may be fuel inefficient, extremely rudimentary on the inside, and comparatively tiny when positioned next to their modern replacement, they did set the bar for long-term reliability. The LLV more than lived up to its namesake as a “Long Life Vehicle.” But many are in extremely rough shape, with local offices having to purchase whatever they can find on the local market to help with deliveries.
The new Oshkosh Defense Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) is decidedly modern, offering more creature comforts and room for packages. Air conditioning is probably the item mail carriers will appreciate most. But they’ll also have new safety features that you’d expect to find on most modern automobiles — including exterior camera arrays, anti-lock brakes, and blind-spot monitoring. They’re more in line with modern delivery vans (think Amazon or UPS) than the old LLVs. Carriers will even have room to stand inside them.
But it hasn’t been an easy road in procuring the new models. The LLV was forced into service for far longer than anyone expected and when the new vehicles were ordered, many accused the government of playing favorites with military contractors. The Biden administration likewise wanted the Post Office to transition to all-electric vehicles, creating problems in terms of ordering the new models.
The USPS initially seemed fine with having electric mail trucks, but noted that they wouldn’t work well for certain routes — particularly those that involved long distances or harsh climates. This created demands that more money was allocated for the USPS to purchase both. Several environmental groups were sent into an outrage when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy stated that roughly 90 percent of the initial purchase of Oshkosh vehicles would be powered by gasoline.
The Biden administration was likewise upset, as it had set a goal to pivot government vehicles to electric power. California and a coalition of blue states even sued the USPS, saying that the Post Office was effectively obligated to buy hundreds of thousands of EVs.
“Everybody went nuts,” DeJoy told the AP.
The Post Office was concerned that EVs wouldn’t be as useful or cost effective in the long run. In addition to the all-electric versions of the Oshkosh NGDV being more expensive than its gasoline counterpart, the USPS would need to install countless charging stations that would have multiplied the total cost several times over if they were to be implemented as full-time delivery vehicles.
However, some locations will see charging stations installed thanks to the USPS negotiating more federal help. Following talks with John Podesta (Senior Advisor to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation), the Biden administration agreed to give the USPS $3 billion — some of which would be reserved for the installation of those expensive charging stations.
With additional funding under its belt, the USPS has vowed to purchase more EVs and go entirely electric by 2026. But we know that’s a farce. If there were routes that all-electric mail trucks couldn’t handle in 2022, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to tackle them in 2026. The Biden administration has also thrown a staggering amount of money toward companies building EV charging stations outside the purview of the Post Office with very little to show for it.
But the preachy environmental groups seem happy enough and DeJoy has said the Post Office will be revising routes in the hopes of reducing emissions and making it more feasible to run electrified trucks. The White House has even honored the USPS with a Presidential Federal Sustainability Award and all it took was spending more tax dollars in exchange for some loose promises about buying electric trucks from a major weapons contractor.
[Images: USPS]
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